One form of electronic 3D walkthrough environment is created using a set of connected panorama images in where a viewer can navigate and experience the simulated electronic 3D environment as one panorama after another being presented before the viewer. A panorama means an unbroken view of a scene from a viewpoint. A panorama can be either a series of photographs or panning video footage. The terms: “panoramic tour” and “virtual walkthrough” have mostly been associated with virtual tours created using still cameras. Such a virtual tour is made up of a number of photo-shots taken from a single vantage point.
Different from virtual tours, in making a video tour, the targeted environment is filmed at a walking pace while moving continuously from one location point to another throughout the targeted environment using a video camera. The benefit of video tour is that the point of view is constantly changing throughout a pan. However, capturing high-quality video requires significantly higher technical skill and more expensive equipment than those in taking digital still pictures. The video also takes away viewer control and interaction of the tour; thus, the tour is the same for all viewers and the subject matter can only be that chosen by the videographer.
There are many applications for electronic 3D walkthroughs, such as that in providing an immersed and interactive visual experience of a remote destination for a viewer without her physical presence. Electronic 3D walkthroughs are being used in many augmented reality or electronic 3D reality (AR/VR) applications for virtual tour and environment navigation. Traditional seamless walkthrough experience requires high-cost depth camera, intensive computational power, and very large storage capacity in reconstructing the three-dimensional scenes at numerous location points and viewpoints. To lower cost, more economical 360 cameras are more and more frequently used in place of the depth cameras. However, the panoramas needed to be stitched together manually in this case. As such, until today electronic 3D walkthroughs in mobile and time-critical applications are very limited.
Therefore, there is an unmet need for techniques of generating two dimensional (2D) panoramas-based electronic 3D walkthroughs with seamless scene transitions that require no manual stitching of the panoramas, less computational power, compact storage capacity, and inexpensive equipment.